A blog for the Alexandria, Virginia, Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Looking Back on the Jan 31st
Retreat and Feb 3rd Chapter Meeting

The all-day retreat on Saturday Jan. 31st
was a huge success in that 103 singers attended, our coach Brandon Guyton taught us some fantastic new skills, our musical and
admin leaders were prepared to help make things go smoothly.

Early arrivals enjoyed coffee (Jack Pitzer and Kevin Kaiser), donuts (Chuck
McKeever), and plenty of water bottles (also Chuck). The choir suite at First Baptist was a good work space for
the day.

Assistant director Mike Kelly did the vocal warm ups.When Brandon arrived wearing
a Harmonizer logo shirt, the guys cheered.And then he confessed, his luggage didn’t make it and so he borrowed clothes
from director Joe Cerutti.

Joe welcomed some new special forces guys to the risers
– Mike Fasano and Alan Lamson (who actually went with us
to Normandy).

Mid-day we took time for lunch off campus and in
the afternoon, we had some sectional breakouts. The morning was mostly all work
on the ballad and the afternoon a dig-into-it-session on the uptune.

Good news is that Brandon will be back to work with us, along with David Wright, for our weekend retreat
in Western Maryland, May 29-30.

Tuesday nite then, we continued the progress on
the contest package.

First off, a large group of men came for the 6
pm training session on the stage with Chuck
McKeever, and the front row guys worked in the lobby on their routines with
choreographer Carlos Barillo.

To start the main meeting, Carlos did some warm up exercises and then associate director Tony Colosimo did the vocal warm
ups.Great to have Tony in the house for a couple hours this week after the recent
birth of his daughter.He thanked
everyone for their wishes, support and outpouring of family support.

When director Joe Cerutti took over, he thanked Chris Huber for spearheading the tribute for retiring assistant
director Will Cox.

And Joe
announced that another Harmonizer is working for the BHS – Carlos will work from his home in the DC Metro area on the outreach
team and on the convention organizing team. Congrats to Carlos.Great addition to
the BHS operation.

Joe expressed his excitement about the retreat with
Brandon.And jumped right into polishing what we
learned.

We worked on contest songs and new songs for the
American Icon show in Sept.

Before break we had out weekly chapter meeting.
Operations vp Todd Ryktarsyk managed
the meeting time.Chris Huber gave more details about the Tues, Feb. 10th
tribute for Will, at 8 pm during
next week’s meeting.Former members and
Harmonizer family are all encouraged to attend. There will be refreshments too.

Howard Nestlerode is collecting the $30 payments for the Sat. Feb. 7 Presidents’
Award Banquet at the Spates Club and Conference Center at Ft. Myers in
Arlington, VA from 7:00 - 10:00 PM. Address is 214 McNair Rd, Bldg #407, Fort
Myer, VA 22211. Dress is business casual (no jeans). The buffet dinner will
include Chicken Marsala, Beef Stroganoff, and Baked Cod Fish. No table
assignments will be made in advance. Each table will seat eight.

Our chapter honcho for
Pittsburgh, Craig Kujawa, announced
that anyone wanting housing in the chapter’s assigned hotel, the Wyndam Grand,
needs to make reservations by April 1st using the link provided by Craig in a previous Pittsburgh
newsletter.

Secretary Chris Buechler presented membership
renewal cards to Brian Ammerman for
21 years, Bob Sutton for 31 years
(great to see Bob with us for this
week), and Mark Klostermeyer for 34
years.

President Terry Reynolds reminded everyone about
the vocal self-evaluation process and the need to submit a form.Terry
also mentioned he thought all the members would be proud to check out the
chapter’s annual report on the chapter’s website.

Membership vp Rich Hewitt introduced out guests for
this week, reminded us to invite guys to sign up for the Open Audition on Wed.
Feb. 11th at Durant, and asked again if anyone has an old I-pad for
the membership kiosk.Rich also lead us in singing Happy
Birthday for Ellen Dellert.

After the break, we
worked more on our new music, we did some sectional work with all of our new
section leaders in action (Rick Savage
actually repeating for the tenors; Josh
DesPortes for the leads; Reed
Livergood for the baritones; and Andrew
Havens and Jim Lake for the
basses) and we had a great drill on the performance package for “Thriller” that
we will be debuting soon.

Joe ended the singing with
some good comments about our progress on the new uptune!!All the guys pitched in to put equipment
away, clean up the hall, get refreshment gear away, and hurry off to the
afterglow.

There was a good bit of
excitement in the hall before the meeting about costumes for Pittsburgh.

The FRIENDS IN HARMONY
remind us that the scrip program is going to run a little differently from last
year, with fewer in-person sales and more focus on pre-orders. Each month they
place one big batch order with the scrip center and deliver the cards on the
second Tuesday of the month. If you have questions, contact scrip sales
chairman, Christina Ammerman, cmammerman@gmail.com.
Her recent email message to all members explained lots of detail on how it
works.

Until next time –
editorjack!

(This message is prepared for your review if you
were there, for your information if you had to miss, and as a historical record
of the great things going on each week during the 66th year of the
Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. —YeEd.